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Dick is on the computer in the batcave, finishing up some last-minute mission reports. He thinks he’s alone until he hears cursing erupt from behind him, accompanied by the sound of heavy boots echoing against stone walls.
He turns around to see Jason stomping into the cave, a scowl set in his face and his clothes splattered with bloodstains. It sends an instinctive jolt rolling through Dick’s gut. “Dude, are you okay?”
Jason bats a hand in Dick’s direction. “Don’t have a heart attack, it’s not mine.” As an afterthought he raises his arm, where blood has soaked through the sleeve. “Well, this part is. But the rest of it isn’t.”
Dick stands, not entirely sure what his plan is, but Jason walks right past him. He pulls off his helmet and lets it clatter to the ground. “Don’t worry about calling Bruce, I just need to borrow a few things and then I’ll be out of your hair.” He starts rifling through the shelves of medical supplies. He takes handfuls of gauze, suture kits, and bandages with his good hand while the other stays tucked against his side.
Dick comes closer. “What happened?”
Jason fiddles with a bottle of Oxy. Eventually he gives up and hands it to Dick, who unscrews the cap for him before shaking out a few pills and handing them over. “Some fucker with a knife wanted to get frisky.” He downs the pills. “And before you ask,
no,
I didn’t kill him.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
Dick watches Jason take a seat on one of the stools and roll up his sleeve, hissing through his teeth. There’s a deep slash right up his forearm—sticky with blood. He takes out a needle and thread, but his injured arm shakes as he tries to thread it.
“Need some help?”
“No,” Jason says stubbornly. Dick comes over anyway and takes the supplies from his hands. “I can do it myself.”
“I know you can, Jay.” He slides on a pair of gloves. As he gets to work wiping away the blood around the wound, he gets a flashback of when Jason was a kid, coming home from a long night of crime fighting and waking Dick up because he didn’t know how to do sutures yet. The old days.
Jason watches with a sharp gaze as Dick gets to work on closing the cut. “Don’t go expecting me to owe you a favor after this. ‘Cause I won’t.”
“I know.”
A few minutes go by in silence before Jason looks around the empty cave. “I’m guessing everyone else is off the clock?”
“Tim had a work thing, Damian is at Jon’s house, Bruce is with Selina, and I’m pretty sure Duke and Cass had plans to skateboard on an ice rink. Something like that.”
“In that case, don’t go tattling if a couple cans of whipped cream happen to go missing on my way out.”
Dick snorts, but there’s a grim tension hovering over them both. It’s in the fact that Jason chose a time when in which everyone was gone to visit. The fact that his
last
visit was over three months ago. “You know you’re welcome here, right? You don’t have to go sneaking around all the time.”
Jason rolls his eyes.
“I’m serious. This place is still your home.”
“Sure it is. I just killed a guy, but sure, let’s have a nice family dinner and pretend the blood on my hands is ketchup.”
Dick’s hands still. “I thought you said you didn’t kill him?”
Jason shrugs. “Just because he was alive when I left doesn’t mean he stayed that way.”
Dick shakes his head, picking up the dropped stitch. “Still. Even if you do bad things, that doesn’t mean you’re automatically exiled from the family for good. We don’t do that here and you know it.”
Jason sighs dramatically. “But being a lone wolf is so
fun, Dickiebird.”
“You’re making it really hard to have a heartfelt conversation here.”
“Is that what we’re doing? I thought this was bros helping bros.”
“Stay here tonight,” Dick says, meeting Jason’s eyes. “Bruce will let you, and I know Alfred will be happy to see you.”
As soon as Dick ties off the last suture, Jason gets up. He pulls away and starts wrapping gauze around his arm. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got stuff to do.”
“But you’ll think about it?”
Jason yanks his sleeve back down before going over to pick up his helmet. He doesn’t look back at Dick. “No promises.” And Dick supposes that’s as good an answer as he can expect to get. At least it’s not a no.
Jason goes to leave, then, and Dick calls out, “Don’t forget your whipped cream, Jay.”
Jason laughs but doesn’t stop walking. “I’ll come back for it later.”
And that makes Dick smile.